The board chairman of a Caribbean medical school with ties to George Mason University has been charged with arson for a series of fires on the island of Curaçao, although none of them affected the school, according to reports in the local news media.

The official, John Daryanani, has been harried for years by rumors of money troubles, and at least one of the fires struck a business in which his family holds an interest.

The medical school, known as the St. Martinus University Faculty of Medicine, began operating in 2003, part of a boom in such for-profit institutions over the last decade. During a Chronicle reporter’s visit in mid-2005, St. Martinus had seven full-time professors and 35 students, half of the enrollment that Mr. Daryanani said it required to break even. At that time, several professors but no students were from the United States.

St. Martinus employees who answered the telephone recently said that they could not comment on events there or state whether the school’s operations had been affected by Mr. Daryanani’s arrest.

Last year St. Martinus signed an agreement with George Mason to enable “qualified Mason undergraduates” to apply 12 biology credits toward their first year of studies at St. Martinus. The deal also created a need-based scholarship for a George Mason graduate to study at St. Martinus.

George Mason representatives said they did not know whether anybody associated with George Mason had been at St. Martinus or was affected by events there. Local news reports did not indicate that students or university operations had been affected.

St. Martinus is one of dozens of medical colleges in Caribbean nations that teach in English and enroll students from the United States or other wealthy nations who plan to return home to practice medicine. However, no American or international agency monitors the schools’ educational quality. —Mike Ceaser